Avoid Stranger’s Drool: Prissy Travel Tips, Part One

Here’s my number one travel tip, though I imagine a lot of travel gurus would disagree with me, because of the room this takes up in a suitcase: Bring your own pillow. Travel with your own pillow from home.

I take my pillow off my bed and stuff it in my suitcase. If you take your own pillow, every bed is your bed.

The quality of hotel beds vary, but you can make the process easier by having something from home. AND you don’t have to put your face on something that somebody else was drooling on just 24 hours before.

Also, hotel beds tend to be foam. And they’re foam even at NICE places. I have found foam pillows at four star hotels. Often, if you call the desk and ask for a feather pillow, they’ll bring one up, but this isn’t always the case. A nasty hard foam pillow can mean difficulty sleeping — maybe even a stiff neck the next day.

I’ll say it again. If you sleep on your own pillow, every bed is your bed.

By the way, in the 2000 campaign, this is the one thing — THE ONE THING — that the press got after Bush about. They made fun of him for taking his pillow with him, and so he started sleeping on motel and hotel pillows on the campaign trail and . . . well, the poor man hasn’t been the same since.

I’m taking my pillow to four countries in the next few weeks — and I don’t know how many beds. And I have it in a red pillowcase so I won’t be able to miss it when I do my last once-over before leaving each room. I’ll keep you posted.

If like me, you have achieved wisdom in the area of travel, feel free to leave your best travel tips here.